Archive for September, 2010

More thoughts on your small business advertising, the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 rule.

Applying this rule to your advertising can save you money and make you money in any economy. The bad news is that it’s when times get tough that people start to pay attention.

I’ll guarantee you that 80% of your prospects, customers, clients, whatever, are coming from 20% of your advertising. You need to be testing and tracking your advertising to see what is a cost and what is an investment. By doing this you can start to figure out where you are wasting money and plug the leaks. That money can be plowed into successful methods, which will generate more profits so you can arrive at your bills with cash.

As a side note, I have many clients tell me that one form or another of advertising is to expensive. That’s rubbish and I’ll prove it. Let’s use direct mail as an example. Let’s say you sell $50,000 cars, if you mail out 10,000 pieces to every household to a zip code sort I suspect your results will not be very good. If you mail out 10,000 pieces that are from a sorted list like, income level, car enthusiasts, previous sports car or high end car buyers and owners, people that subscribe to luxury car magazines, people that subscribe to the Rob report, and so on I suspect your success maybe a bit better.

The first method is going to be cheaper to do, but it will cost you more in the end.

Do you see the point, it’s no always the how, it may be the who, what, where, when. The only exception I would make to that is the Yellow Pages. Most small business owners are finding out that the yellow pages are dying as the cost goes up. Why, you ask? It’s because of what got you here, the Internet.